Is there 'Past' Life on Mars? Crowdsourcing May Have the Answer

The question of where or not there was ever (or even possibly still is somewhere) life on mars has been asked long before David Bowie asked it in his 1973 hit. Explorations and findings of the last decade and a half has the scientific community excited and now crowdsourcing offers the next step in the ultimate search. NASA has teamed up with two science-led crowdsourcing platforms Drivendata and HEROX to launch 'Mars Spectrometry,Detect Evidence for Past Life' invites data scientists, researchers and academics to help find out if there really was life on Mars. 

Saving UK High Streets with Crowdfunding

The UK high street is in trouble! Retail business from small independent traders to major blue chip retail outlets and departments stores have closed their doors, some even declared insolvent.  Changing shopping habits to online alternatives amplified by the recent Covid19 global pandemic has seen the high street's decline turning some city centres into veritable ghost towns. As we start to come out of the government restrictions made necessary by the pandemic UK high street shops are looking got help to rebuild and trade sustainably and the answer just might lie with crowdfunding. The 'Camden Future High Streets Crowdfund' initiative led by Camden London Borough Council in partnership with the crowdfunding platform Spacehive was launched to help fund projects aimed to revitalise Camden High Streets. The aim is to help projects meet their funding targets from a monetary pot of £360,000 set aside for worthy campaigns, and already two have been selected for this award. So can Crowdfunding save the retail high street?

Can Crowdsourcing Save Democracy?

Partisan political differences have transformed heated disagreements to something more abusive, and violent with all sides determined to silence the other. Democracy is in danger but what can be done to get both sides talking again and reduce anti-demoractic action? Academics at renowned American educational institution Stanford University have turned to crowdsourcing for answers. Headed by the Stanford and Polarisation and Social Change Lab this new initiative will collect and test a series of proposed interventions to reduce aggressive anti-democratic attitudes. This online experiment called The Strengthening Democracy Challenge'  will test 30,000 participants with the most successful models published and its developers awarded a cash prize.